Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh while speaking of the growing crimes against women in Meghalaya pointed at the need for legal and social reforms to address this malaise. While the judiciary since the time of the Nirbhaiya rape case has come up with many enlightening laws to better empower women and deal strictly with crimes against them, societal reforms are tardy. Justice JS Verma is remembered for those legal reforms which led to the legislation of Prevention of Children from Sexual Harassment Act (PoCSO) and strengthening laws against rape. The Justice Verma Committee further recommended educational reforms vis a vis imparting sex education to school children. It recommended that children’s experiences should not be gendered and that education on sexuality be imparted to children. It also proposed adult literacy programmes as being necessary for gender empowerment.
Needless to in Meghalaya sex is a taboo for open discussion but children are consuming loads of sex videos and are wanting to experiment it in real life. Romantic relationships among adolescents lead to unwanted pregnancies that become the burden of only the woman/girl. Yet we live in a society where sex is discussed in hushed tones. Even educational institutions are not ready to discuss sex upfront when that should be the training ground to sensitise adolescents about the perils of teenage pregnancies. Such discussions cannot be gender-segregated. They need to be discussed where both genders are present because both need massive awareness on protected sex. The fact that so many young lives are ruined due to unintended and unplanned pregnancies should have made the society sit up and think of ways forward to prevent these accidental childbirths that become a lifelong burden but because this burdens the woman/girl only, the initiative should be aggressively taken up by women’s organisations since the Dorbar Shnong seems to walk on eggshells as far as the issue of sex is concerned. Meghalaya now boasts of several self-help groups (SHGs) organised for economic empowerment especially of poor rural women. Leaders of these SHGs should also be trained to empower other young women on protected sex and condom use. In rural Meghalaya condom use is considered to be against certain religious tenets. The question is what are those religions and religious heads doing to prevent teenage pregnancies and sexual assault on women and girls when this is the single most important reason for poverty that then affects all other areas of life?
For a society that is constantly projecting itself as being culturally superior to others and sweeps under the carpet the atrocities that regularly afflict women such as a man abandoning his wife/partner after having fathered two or three children and does not know the meaning of “alimony,” women continue to have a raw deal. Matriliny unfortunately disguises and covers up all these societal flaws. Unless society honestly dissects all these problems in a frank, free and fearless manner and takes corrective measures not much will change in the Hynniewtrep society. Voice as agency for women to address their issues needs to be recognised. Women should raise their voices in appropriate platforms.
